BTW I can connect to some networks even in slh.2, but unfortunately I can't get iwlist output for them right now because now I'm not near the network which I can successfully connect to. So I think that the problem is authtype-specific.

It would also be very interesting to determine if scanning (iw dev wlan0 scan) succeeds or if there is a pattern which network kinds it can't access (WEP, WPA1psk/ TKIP, WPA2psk/ CCMP, etc.), eventual errors or warnings in dmesg and what wpa_cli has to say.

AR9285 is working fine for me in a WPA2psk/ CCMP environment, using HT40 in the 2.4 GHz band.